London by night - The old girl scrubs up quite nicely

[THX138]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/i...

Stunning pics!

[cheshire_cat]

Fantastic photos, Would love some high resolution versions for desktop images.

[Tuna]

London is a beautiful city, but we (the British) aren't very good at singing it's praises. Look at the way Americans photograph and visualise their cities (even though they are just as chaotic and dirty at street level as any other), then look at our attempts.

It's really notable when a UK TV series presents London (or any other city) as a 'cool' place - we're just not very good at that sort of self-promotion.

Jason Hawkes' website is here: http://www.jasonhawkes.com

[Sciroccology]

Fantastic pictures, but how the hell do you do night-time shots (needing a long exposure) whilst (presumably) hovering in a bumpy helicopter?

[MTJones]

Had these in my photobucket account, not sure if it's the same chap, and I can't remember where I got them from so sorry no high res.

[Neil_H]

HDR-tastic

[pokethepope]

Sciroccology said:

Fantastic pictures, but how the hell do you do night-time shots (needing a long exposure) whilst (presumably) hovering in a bumpy helicopter?

Some form of clever gyroscopic mount IIRC.

[michaeljclark]

Slightly larger ones here: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/london_fr...

Mike

[TonyHetherington]

Those are the views you get when you fly into London City on a clear night or when you fly into heathrow from Europe and have to sit in the queue; brilliant!

[Sciroccology]

pokethepope said:

Sciroccology said:

Fantastic pictures, but how the hell do you do night-time shots (needing a long exposure) whilst (presumably) hovering in a bumpy helicopter?

Some form of clever gyroscopic mount IIRC.

Clever stuff indeed.

[clonmult]

Seeing the first picture on the beeb there, made me regret leaving the job in London - the only building between our office and tower bridge was the Thistle hotel (or whatever its called).

Something quite inspiring on a dark night about heading out of the office, walking out to the Thames and seeing Tower Bridge all lit up ....

[blindswelledrat]

Looks stunning.I work in London day in day out and commute underground etc and you forget quite how brilliant London can be sometimes.

[Chris71]

Neil_H said:

HDR-tastic

Think it's a great technique though, providing it's not massively over done.

[youngsyr]

Re how the pics are taken, do you not just ramp up the sensitivity to light and keep a reasonably fast shutter speed?

ETA: You can clearly see my office building on the first photo.

Edited by youngsyr on Wednesday 28th January 16:44

[Bad-Gerbil]

uuuuuuuuurrrrrrr light polution
Think of the Astronomers!

[youngsyr]

I hope that post was in jest?!

If not, you do realise that London is dark for 16 hours of the day during some parts of the year and 8 million people need to see where they're going?

[Simpo Two]

pokethepope said:

Sciroccology said:

Fantastic pictures, but how the hell do you do night-time shots (needing a long exposure) whilst (presumably) hovering in a bumpy helicopter?

Some form of clever gyroscopic mount IIRC.

The traffic isn't blurred so I'd vote for high ISO.

Edited by Simpo Two on Wednesday 28th January 17:15

[OzzyR1]

Bumped this as I just remembered where some other excellent photos in this vein are - couldn't remember yesterday:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/more_of_l...

[THX138]

OzzyR1 said:

Bumped this as I just remembered where some other excellent photos in this vein are - couldn't remember yesterday:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/more_of_l...

Very nice!

[Jasandjules]

Bad-Gerbil said:

uuuuuuuuurrrrrrr light polution
Think of the Astronomers!

I don't think you'll find tooo many observatories in central London for just that reason.

If you come out to where I live, it's incredible how clear the night sky tends to be.